I’ve been working on the silicon carbide video and I’m still working on it! Been a bit of a drawn-out process, but I’ve been able to get a water chiller to run the cooling on the induction furnace, so I’m really excited to go push it to its limit in the next week or two, chasing a 1800 C temperature that will let us f...
2025-11-10 12:44:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings!! Here is a brand new chemistry energetics video. I make some flash powders which aren’t very good, and it takes me a while. But… it all works out?? Maybe??
Thanks for all your support, not just for letting me buy $500 of BTC in 2020 but for the support that keeps me making these videos even after constan...
2025-10-12 10:43:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone! Here's an update on what i've been working on!
The next video really should be the next Cubane video where we do photo-reactor stuff...... but it wont be. I've just been stuck doing boring purification on the diketone and not building the photo-reactor and its not interesting! I've been filming this stuff ...
Hello everyone! OpenSauce was great but always makes the month fly by! Can’t believe it is August!
The panel and Gameshow I was on at the festival are viewable through this new Sauce+ video platform for a signup fee- sorry that I can’t publically post it. But the game show especially and the other one’s I’ve se...
2025-08-03 13:18:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone!
The goal for the new Big Cubane series was to make 100g of cubane by the OpenSauce festival (July 19-20th). .Oh no...... that's somehow only a month away so it's a very tight deadline!!! But I'll do what I can!! ((Will I be seeing any of you there in San Francisco in July??))
So yes the next video...
Hello!! The video for this month will be the ‘Making a Yellow Pigment’ video, which is a Tantalum doped Yttrium molybdate. The chemistry is coming along… but the final step is a hearing step at 1400 degrees C for several hours… I’ve got a steel melting 5000W induction furnace online and uhhh powering it is an issue-...
2025-05-01 12:16:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello!! This is my video about the Plutonium guy. It’s currently a Draft, I have to finish it ASAP but I’m sick of the sound of my own voice!!!!
So if you give this a watch let me know if any arguments seem wrong or don’t make sense… maybe sections that need more graphics?? Or places where the sound quality is b...
2025-04-03 12:39:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone!
So like most people, I’ve been getting a bit mad about this news story out of Sydney about a guy who imported plutonium. It’s all a bit strange and maddening so I thought I’d do something a bit different and make a video about it on Explosions&Fire!
I know it’s odd having a...
2025-04-02 01:32:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello! I think a lot of the fun of an Extractions&Ire video is you genuinely don’t know if the science is going to go very well or very poorly, will I get things right or mess everything up? So some of my favourite videos are when both of those things happen- we immediately win some and lose some.
This is definit...
2025-03-23 12:23:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello all! Time flies by doesn’t it always!!
The next video out on extractions&ire is the bromination of the ketal, the latest in the big scale cubane synthesis. As picture, there’s 300 ml of bromine! I’m yet to run the actual reaction— but soon- I’m excited! Video should be out mid March.
Looking f...
2025-03-01 12:10:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello all,
My quest to post a monthly video remains elusive, but I am getting better I think!
I’m nearly done with the ‘Jan’ video, which is making Er-Yb doped Yttrium oxide. I’ve got an IR laser so tomorrow we will finally see if all my work has paid off and we can see the ‘Upconversion fluorescence’ ...
2025-01-31 11:32:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi all! Back to work tomorrow… I’m sure many of you are feeling this… apologies for reminding you…
But lots of shed chem going on! Here’s the overview of the current projects:
Extractions&Ire:
Hi everyone! Hope you’re getting a break at the end of the year- anyone doing some cool projects? Maybe some chemistry??
The weather here is beautiful, maybe a little hot… but perfect for chemistry I feel- nice long sunny days. Currently I’m trying to do the first 2 cubane steps at the large scale. Things are look...
2024-12-21 12:57:50 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone! I’m excited to say what the next long series on the channel is! The first intro video should be out this month or early December, with the first actual chemistry video coming out shortly after that.
The series is:
Cubane: The quest for 100g
We are once again making Cubane 1-4...
2024-11-17 13:12:14 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone! Sorry for the long post, but here’s some info about upcoming changes to the Patreon.
In short: your pledge will stay the same amount, but from December, will be charged monthly to support the channel in advance of a video, rather than per video after the video is posted. If you’re happy with this, y...
2024-10-28 01:04:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello again, here is the FOOF/PtF6 video (without any render errors... just had to run the air conditioner at full blast onto the computer for the whole render--- need to fix the thermal paste ASAP maybe I think?)
Anyway, bit of a different video but hope you enjoy it! Next video we will be sure to return to doing shed...
Hello everyone! The new video is here for you to watch early access now!!
Just like last video, this is meant to be the final version, but after uploading I see that there are some render errors, probably from my computer overheating again…… re-rendering and uploading is at least a 5 hour process, so I will do...
2024-10-12 12:47:55 +0000 UTC View Post
... but not out until next week. The German group I filmed the video with are still reviewing the final version, so I'll wait until I get the final tick of approval from them before I upload. They've seen previous versions and things have been okay so it should be fine.... I'm not nervous at alll..... (I never have to have ot...
2024-10-03 14:00:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi all, hope you're doing well! I'm going to be turning off the merch at the end of the month... this is mostly because I need to spend time updating it, making new designs, improving the shipping efficiency... a bit of work that I've been avoiding. So there will be more cool things in the future (and patreon will be the firs...
2024-08-26 13:49:52 +0000 UTC View Post
I’ve just finished up a few days in Berlin where I was lucky enough to film some of the most powerful oxidisers ever made. Some really fascinating chemistry and I can’t wait to make this all into the video.
In the first picture you can see liquid oxygen floating on liquid fluorine, which gets exposed to UV light tu...
2024-07-28 11:17:12 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone!
The yellow powder video has done well, which is nice! But onto the next video!
I'm going to be trying something different - I'm going to be visiting a University in Europe to film some dangerous chemistry. All the Ex&F videos over the years have been about me personally doing the chemistry, so it wi...
Here it is! (again).
Sorry about having to reupload it- oh man I've spent all day trying to get it to re-render without glitching. I think my cpu needs new thermal paste or something... it was an hour long edit and it seemed to really be suffering for the last 15 minutes of the edit. Anyway... hope you enjoy it! And he...
2024-07-05 15:11:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello, here is my new video on yellow powder. Thanks for your patience, and as always thanks for your support in keeping the videos sponsor segment free (because honestly ask yourself, how would I fit in a sponsor segment into this video?? Remove the parts complaining about the NBN? Complaining about the ketamine purity in Au...
2024-07-04 13:04:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi all, just a quick update on the content:
The next Ex&F video on Yellow Powder is still getting edited together. I’m optimistic that it is only a week or two away!! I’m really happy with it so far, to me it’s the right mix of very interesting science and increasingly odd ‘commitment to the bit’.
O...
2024-06-21 14:42:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone!
As per usual, this is just an update to say I am indeed working on the next Ex&F video - the 'Yellow Powder' one will hopefully be done before... or at least shortly after Open Sauce 2024, which has me going to San Francisco for the festival on June 14-16.
Say hello if you'll be there! I met a few of ...
Hi all, just a larger scale test of the yellow powder mixture, with some footage at 31000fps. Very excited to see a shockwave in the footage! Wasn't expecting to see it so clearly in broad daylight, but its certainly there.
I read your comments on the previous post about the low-res footage, and people didn't seem to mind...
Just sharing some early footage of some yellow powder explosions I filmed last week. Small scale stuff, confirming that the mix does explode like I expect it to! Also trying out some more high-speed footage things, this is ramping my camera up to 15968 fps! I'm not sure how useful that footage is though, because it feels hard...
2024-04-06 11:32:03 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! I've had a bit of a break from making Ex&F videos recently, and have instead focused on Extraction&Ire videos, which have been a lot of fun. Its been great to wrap up the cubane series and also do some individual one-off inorganic videos- and feedback seems to be that people really like those longer inorgan...
2024-03-11 12:41:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Hope everyone had a great Christmas this year! Christmas in Australia means holidays with long, sunny days (although it did rain on Christmas this year here which is pretty odd) which are perfect for doing chemistry.
I’ve gifted myself some new element samples and am excited to do some inorganic...
2023-12-26 03:03:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Ok I fixed the typo and re-uploaded... also didn't tick the box saying "this video contains slightly dangerous activities" or whatever, so now it hasn't got age restricted.... hopefully it stays that way. Will make it public after I sleep (in maybe 8 hours??) because otherwise I'll be stressing all night about it.
